It was probably at this comparatively late period that certain foreign customs of a sadly lowering character were adopted by this plastic and impressible people, who learnt the vice of paederasty from the Greeks, and adopted from the

Eric Clarke largely passes over Shelley's essay; he notes that Shelley could not get over an incongruity between Greek paederasty and Greek philosophy as thus he "postulated wet daydreams as the true source" behind homoeroticism (127).

And the poet not only explains the alterity of Greek sexuality in terms of gender inequality, but he also denies the existence of gender inequality in Britain to make love between men and paederasty now impossible.

He has thus refined his notion of alterity from a "priggish" one that would not acknowledge any resemblance (14) between ancient paederasty and modern homosexuality, to an alterity that now "acknowledge [s], promote [s], and support [s] a heterogeneity of queer identities, past and present"